DBS Bank Case

Question: Evaluate the impact of hackathon in DBS bank. Mention the criteria for your
evaluation.
Answer:
As a company DBS was betting big on digital technology to spearhead its growth strategy. In
line with this objective of riding the digital wave, DBS started Digibank- a new digital banking
organization. With appropriate staffing, many positions in Digibank were filled with both the
Internal and external talent bringing together the corporate and the start-up culture striking
right balance. Now that the Digibank is in place, DBS wanted to take this a step further to
transform the whole organization into a digital one. Due to appropriate recruitment and
staffing strategy Digibank was very well versed with the digital trends of the day. Digital
transformation and services will essentially alter the customer journey maps, this demands
for the upgradation of employee mindset about them. While the objective for the top
management was clear, there was ambiguity about the methods or ways in which this can be
achieved. They wanted a method which is more focused on top-level management and
engaging which makes learning experiential. This is where the idea of Hackathon came into
picture for achieving the above said change in mindset of top-level management.
Impact of Hackathon:
The Idea of Hackathon was to make the executives work with digital savvy start up
entrepreneurs in a team to device solutions for a business challenge. The five-day hackathon
was divided into two parts where the first two days were dedicated to introducing digital
trends and technologies to the teams and rest three days for devising a solution, obtaining
customer inputs, coding etc.
1. Hackathon helped the executive talent in changing their mindset to embrace various
digital technologies. This mindset and thought changes are of utmost importance in
achieving Digital transformation.
2. Hackathon also helped DBS in changing the perspective of the top-level management
about customer preferences, behaviours and mentality in the digital world.
3. It has shown to Vice presidents the relevance of digitization in the banking industry
4. This Hackathon has given birth to 50 prototypes in various areas of banking which can
be implemented if viable with some efforts.
5. These Hackathons has set the ball rolling for the organization by creating enough
momentum towards achieving the digital goal.
Criteria for evaluation: According to me, the success of the Hackathon can be evaluated
based on the following criteria
1. Level of People Engagement.
2. Implicit Learnings from the event.
3. Mindset transformation.
4. Feasibility and scalability of the event.